Query Letter: Pike Island: A Political Thriller that Landed an Agent

Tony Wirt’s gotten a lot of attention for his suburban/creepy child thriller, Just Stay Away, about a dad trying to finish his novel and take care for his kid, when a sinister neighborhood boy enters both of their lives. Reviewers flocked to the delightfully creepy pageturner.  Zoje Stage said it “literally had be reading with my shoulders hunched.”  Mindy Mejia warned readers to “[c]ancel your plans and find a good chair because once you start Just Stay Away, you won’t be able to stop.”

In addition to Just Stay Away, Wirt has written a political thriller called Pike Island (originally titled Where the Truth Lies), which is coming out on September 10, 2024.  He was kind enough to share the query that landed him representation for his upcoming work:

Dear Ms. Saul-

I saw in your bio you worked for Sourcebooks. My good friend Shana Drehs had nothing but good things to say about you and suggested I send along a query for my novel WHERE THE TRUTH LIES.

Krista Walsh fixes problems and isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. She’s guided Harry Leonard from a rural Minnesota city council to the halls of Congress in just a few short years. Now they’re just a step away from the White House, where they have grand plans to shake up the political establishment.

Then a postcard arrives. Someone wants to bring Harry down and is peddling a wild story about stolen drug money. The story is true, but Harry didn’t just blow his share on beer. He used it to put himself though college and start a career in public service. 

If Krista can’t bury it, their careers are over and all the good they’re doing will be wiped out. But as she digs deeper into Harry’s past, she realizes the man she’s shaped into her agent of change may not be as righteous as he claims.

Krista has to decide if that matters as long as Harry can be the transformative president the country desperately needs.

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES (73,000) is a suspense novel with dual timelines that should appeal to fans of LEAVE NO TRACE and IN A DARK, DARK WOOD.

My debut novel, A NECESSARY ACT, was named 2017 Reader’s Choice Novel of the Year by Underground Book Reviews. It spent the summer of 2016 in the Amazon Kindle Top 100 for both Psychological Suspense and Psychological Thrillers, and has more than 1.15 million pages read on Kindle Unlimited.

Thank you for your time and consideration. 

Tony Wirt